I think the trip to the mall ended very well, though it scares me how many famous figures I've met by coincidence in just the first few weeks after finishing the first floor.

The twins overtook 'Seraphim' on the Tower Leaderboard in just 2 years after they enter the Tower, and, well, 'Seraphim' himself is already an incredibly powerful figure even right now. There was also Mercury, whose death I want to desperately avoid. And most recently, Megumi Kurogane, the founder of the Black Iron weapons corporation. They were all massively influential figures before I chose to go back in time, and I don't know if I'm lucky that I've met them all within the first few weeks of coming back, or if I should be terrified.

Thoughts on that aside, I know what I'm going to be doing today. Finishing my preparations, I called for Xingxi.

"Xingxi, we're going to the Tower."

Earlier, Mercury figured out how to send messages through the Tower's network, and he's told me that he would be staying in the first floor to assist struggling players with completing the quest. This scared me, since it was this exact thought process that got him killed in the first place. I tried to convince him otherwise, but he was stubborn about it. Something must've changed about him when he completed the first floor, which was why he wanted to help new Players out after clearing the first floor.

I want to change Mercury's fate, he's a really good child, and I don't want to see his passionate eyes become lifeless.

So instead of him helping out struggling players today, I'd be attempting to conquer the second floor with him, which would also serve as a test for the Tower's disguise function. It's better to stay completely anonymous using this disguise rather than have my face plastered all over the internet. I was lucky that Mercury took all the attention from the cameras the first time, but chances are that won't happen again, so I have to take precautions. Not even Players like 'Seraphim' could figure out my true face. Though I think he already knows what I look like.

I snapped out of my thoughts when I say Mercury by the fountain in the city square. He looked like a very cool teenager on his phone as he waited. "Envoy, we're here," I called out to him, when he heard me, I think I could see a puppy's tail wagging as he waved at me. "King! Guess what? I learned a few new skills yesterday! I can actually fight properly now!" Mercury looked very excited, so I couldn't help but pat his head. "Isn't that nice?" I thought Mercury would shy away from the touch, but he just laughed and shrugged it off. "Let's go into the second floor quickly then! I wanna test them out!"

I opened the Tower's system panel and tapped on the second floor. The same transport circle appeared beneath all three of us, my vision was covered by white light, before me, a prompt popped up.

[Would the Player like to use the disguise function?]

This time I could click a button, so I tapped yes without hesitation.

Next thing I knew, the three of us had arrived at the second floor of the Tower.

"Woah, you two! When did you get time to change into something that badass!?" Mercury exclaimed, "You've got the entire 'former king' aesthetic down to a T, with a ruined crown and everything! Has your eye always been golden like that!? And where did you get that cape!? It looks so cool!" Mercury stood on his toes trying to reach the tips of the crown on my head. At least the disguise hasn't seemed to have changed, but I look more like a mage than I do an alchemist. I was about to answer when the Tower announcement rang through our heads.

[Welcome to the Second Floor - Goblin Fields]

[On this floor, Goblins are everywhere if you look close enough. Hidden in caves or amongst the trees and even on open plains! With these creatures wielding all sorts of primitive weapons, Players should watch their backs if they don’t want to be ambushed!]

[New Quest Assigned - Kill 200 Goblins OR Destroy 5 Goblin Totems!]

[Rewards - Access to the Third Floor, Treasure Box x1]

[Note: Those who complete the quest quickly will receive extra rewards!]

[PvP is enabled in this zone.]

The second floor ramped up the difficulty a lot higher than the first. Horned rabbits were simple animals, and their attack patterns can easily be figured out once you’ve fought them enough. Goblins, however, had more intelligence than just charging at a Player and hoping to hit, they could organise ambushes and actual strategies, which meant Players needed to use their heads to combat the goblins at their own game. It was only going to get harder from here on. 

“Goblins!? I thought we were going to fight other animals like wolves or whatnot! I didn’t think we’d be fighting creatures with intelligence! They cranked up the difficulty to Hard!” Mercury whined, I placed a hand on his shoulder to reassure him, “If we play it safe, goblins won’t be a major threat.” “That’s right, we have the super powerful King of Ice and his loyal retainer!” “Erstwhile King of Ice,” I corrected Mercury, there was a difference. “Same difference.” No, it’s not. 

“So, great Erstwhile King of Ice, do you have any strategy as to complete the quests?” Mercury’s question had me thinking, if all I wanted to do was complete the quest, we could start burning down goblin settlements to destroy their totems. Those settlements, however, are also built near precious resources and any damage done to settlements could also damage the resources. “We should seek out a nearby goblin camp, with your speed, it should be trivial to destroy the goblin totems, they’re usually in the centre of the settlement. Xingxi can kill the goblins that attack you and that can contribute to me.” “Huh? What are you gonna do then?” “Gather resources.” “Huh, right. I forgot you were the one who dismantled a ton of rabbits back there!”

Resources like suspiciously shiny rocks, extremely sweet fruits, it took almost a year for players to realise how the second floor was abundant in materials for alchemy. I had to monopolise on this as much as I could. 

“Then let me locate the camps! I’ve got this cool new skill that does just the thing! It can point in the general direction of any item I want to find.” Mercury’s skill description rang a bell, I believe he was talking about the skill Bandit’s Instinct. After a moment of silence, I could see a little lightbulb flash above Mercury’s head. “Okay, let’s go this way!” He pointed, taking off towards the east and leaving dust in his wake.

He really does deserve the title Fleet-Footed Envoy, huh?

Following Mercury’s dust trail, Xingxi and I were met with a large goblin village. “Alright, make sure no goblins come to harm Mercury. As long as I’m on the outskirts of the village, I’ll be safe.” What I said was mostly a lie, goblins tend to wander around the outskirts a lot. I could tell that Xingxi hesitated to leave my side, “It’s okay, Mercury is in more danger than I am.” With a pat on his head, Xingxi dashed into the chaotic goblin village, starting a mass extinction of goblins. I almost feel sorry for them.

Nevertheless, I had my own job to do. 

Remembering the contents of the ‘Alchemist’s Guide to Beginner Floors’ handbook (Who knew a book I bought on a whim would turn out to be extremely useful?), I circled behind the goblin huts to find my first resource.
Just to make sure, I used Appraisal.

[Manacap - E]

[Small blue, glowing mushrooms. When eaten, Manacaps will restore a small amount of Mana to a player as well as give them a mild case of food poisoning. Higher grade Manacaps will restore more Mana and have milder effects.]

I got to work plucking Manacaps. Most of the small mushrooms are E-grade, but occasionally I would find D-grade Manacaps. They weren’t the best, but I wanted lower grade mushrooms anyway, as it became less efficient to refine high grade Manacaps into lesser mana potions. Simply put, it was just not worth going through the trouble when you could just eat it for a similar benefit. The sheer abundance of these little blue mushrooms hidden behind goblin huts were the alchemist’s dream. I really didn’t think there would be this many.

By the time I was done, I had enough Manacaps to refine around 57 lesser mana potions. Not bad for my first haul. I was lucky this time to have no goblins encounter me, though I was prepared if such a scenario were to happen.

I made my way to the rendezvous point, seeing Mercury and Xingxi waiting for me there. “Look who took his sweet time! I destroyed the totem, easy! The goblins went crazy when it shattered into pieces, but I guess that made it easy for your little brother to finish them all off, shall we go to the next village? I can do this all day!” It’s nice to know that Mercury’s full of energy today.

Instead of being out in the open like the previous village, the next goblin settlement was situated in a forest. “Hmm, Mercury, be careful when you go in. They most definitely have set traps around the area, watch your step and your head.” Deaths in the earlier floors of the Tower are rare, since they are meant for beginner players, but goblins can be brutal and falling for one of their traps has a chance to result in death. 

In fact, goblin traps are one of the highest causes of player deaths in the early floors of the Tower, no matter how rare. 

“Don’t underestimate me! I have a knack for sensing traps, but thank you for the warning. Come on Xingxi, let’s go!”

And this time, both of them take off. It’s like a race to see who gets to the village first.

Here comes part 2 of the ‘Alchemist’s Guide to Beginner Floors’ handbook, the outskirts of goblin settlements set in forests contain various traps that often use Melberries, which can be picked from nearby Mella bushes.

I used Appraisal on a nearby Mella bush. I’m so lucky to have received this skill when I returned, I don’t know what I’d do without it.

[Melberry - C]

[A round honey-yellow fruit with a sweet, honey-like flavour. When eaten, Melberries hasten the recovery process of the body, restoring a small amount of health. Higher grade Melberries will restore more health and have a sweeter taste.]

I started to harvest the small fruits, keeping an eye out for traps along the way. I’d be refining a lot more lesser health potions, so I hoped to gather a lot of them. 

It wasn’t long until I felt a presence behind me, and I turned around just in time to narrowly avoid a goblin attempting to bash my head in. Thankfully, the goblin was alone, I’d rather not deal with a large group of them at all. Withdrawing a baseball bat from my inventory, I swung the bat and bashed in the goblin’s head as hard as I could, most likely crushing its skull.
There were three basic rules to handling a lone goblin, the first was to make sure it couldn’t call for its allies, the second was to make sure it was definitely dead, and the third was to get out of the area as fast as possible, dead goblin bodies tend attract other goblins, like dead ants producing oleic acid to alert their fellow ants that they were dead. I had to leave behind a few Melberries, but better safe than death by goblin horde. 

I’d only run into lone goblin scouts two more times, I dealt with them the same way I dealt with the first. It was lucky of me to have gotten away without much of a scratch.

When I met with Mercury and Xingxi, the latter immediately piled onto me with concern, checking my body for wounds. “Are you alright!? We saw groups of goblins heading outside of their village while in the chaos. You didn’t get found, right? Did you trigger any traps?” Mercury bombarded me with questions. “A few goblins found me, so I took care of them before things got heated, I think that may have attracted the other ones.” After deeming that I was in optimal physical condition, Xingxi lifted up Mercury’s left arm and held it towards me. “Ow! Don’t pull on it!” 

I stared at Mercury’s arm and winced, there was a nasty laceration just above his elbow. “How did you get this?” “Triggered a trap on accident…” Mercury mumbled. Hey, don’t look away in shame, I told you to be careful about that. I took out a few Melberries from my inventory, “Here, eat this, this should help with the injury.” 

Without hesitation, Mercury put all of them straight into his mouth. Wait, wait, wait! You can’t just trust me that easily. “It’s sweet! Tastes just like honey!” Mercury stared at his injury, watching it heal before his very eyes like magic. Well, it was pretty much magic. “How did you know these would help?” “I saw a few goblins eating these, their wounds seemed to heal quickly so I thought they’d have the same effect.” Technically, I didn’t see it myself, but this was how the Melberries’ healing was initially discovered.

After Mercury stretched his arm, he took off towards the next goblin settlement without hesitation. You’d think he’d learn to be more careful with his arm after that.

The next two goblin camps actually turned out to be one massive camp!

It seemed like the two goblin tribes had settled too closely to each other and eventually merged into one big tribe. It would have two individual goblin totems, but it essentially worked like one instead of two.

“Slow down, boys, this is a much bigger camp, it’s much more dangerous. It’s not that I don’t have faith in the two of your, but I don’t think either of you can handle so many goblins at once.” This time, before the boys ran off without another word, I held the both of them back. “But wouldn’t it be faster if we raided the place anyway? There’s so many goblins here!” “I’d like to get the quest done as fast as possible, of course, but I think we should move somewhere else, our team is too small to do this.” 

“I can help out, if you want.”

I whipped my head around, immediately recognising that voice. No way, no way in the world! 

Why are you here of all places, Evgeni!?